Patlabor TV 9/10

“In the labor criminal justice system there are two separate yet equally important groups: the special vehicles section, who combat labor crime, and the mechanics who maintain the patrol labours . These are their stories.” DONG DONG!

In the near future giant robots named labors will be created to replace construction and farming equipment. As often as someone goes nuts with a grain thresher, people will go nuts with these labors and the police will need a labor team to stop them. By the way, support your local police anti-thresher team, you don't want that shit in your neighbourhood.

Patlabor is an older show from the early '90s (1990) that really had a large production budget behind it and it shows. The character designs are all quite distinctive while not having to make everyone have crazy coloured and styled hair. The animation also maintains a really high level of quality throughout the 45 episodes with only a couple of exceptions. The backgrounds and music are pretty good and the first end theme is one of the best ever. Where this show shines is with the Japanese VAs without whom the show would fail miserably (as evidenced by the English dub), Ota and Captain Goto are particularly effective as the psycho cop and catatonic Section Captain respectively. I also must mention here that the Patlabor Ingram 3rd MG AV-98 is the coolest mech EVER! (a little above the Veritech from Robotech)

This show revolves around the daily working lives of the Special Vehicles Division 2. They're based in the middle of nowhere, they have a bad reputation of destructiveness on missions, and their team is made up of somewhat odd characters. Of course they also have the most advanced Patlabor in the world at their disposal so it balances things out. Kinda.

Noa the Ingram crazy newbie is the central character and the series typically focuses a little more on her situation than that of the others. She's not good at much but she's an excellent labor pilot and tends to be the one to save the day while insane officer Ota empties rounds into nearby buildings at the drop of a hat. The other members of the cast are in the command cars that direct the labors, drive the carriers that carry the labors into action, and in other roles such the maintenance team and the captains of Divisions 1 & 2.

Each of the characters gets some backstory and most get screen time in each episode but never to the detriment of the plot. The show is really about the team effort in fighting crime and once you get to know them after about 10 episodes their quirks and personalities really make otherwise boring missions really, really interesting and entertaining to watch.

This show has drama, character growth, some great comedy, and an overall plot that stretches throughout the series yet there are a large number of great filler shows to add a real sense of time passing through the series. There isn't much romance here and we don't see much of the cast outside of work but it's not that kind of show.

This show's true finale is in the OAV series that follows it but I can only think of a couple episodes of the 45 that weren't better than the best episode of most other series. Highly, highly recommended.